Turtle on Its Back

A splendid, unsettling first feature from writer Béraud, about a bad case of writer's block. Béraud's achievement lies in finding a visual and visceral language to describe the process of writing as work (more perspiration than inspiration, and more neurosis than either). After sketching the tense domestic relations between financially supportive girlfriend (Lafont) and impotent writer (Stévenin), the film follows the writer off the rails, sliding into a delirious nightmarish journey through a night-town whose torments and triumphs, though vividly real, may also represent the creative process itself.